The Season Turns

 A beautiful fall day.  The sky was clear, the sun angled as it does in fall, warming whatever side of the body it radiates upon.  We decided to drop all else and go float the Salt River, recognizing the clock is ticking fast for this fall season.   

A phone is impossible on a boat.  Using one's phone is a very good way to loose one's phone.  Mine stayed zippered in a pocket where it dinged every time a text or email arrived.  I must remember to turn the thing off next time. 

So there are no photos.  Only words this time. 

We made the usual shuttle to the usual take out/put in spots, the parking lots empty.  Backing into the river, I worry that the brakes won't hold on the big red dually Dodge, but they do and we unload the taught blue rubber raft.  I piece together my old fly fishing rod and pick a miniscule fly with white sticking up on its back.  I have no idea of its name.  Remarkedly, I send the end of  tippit line right through the tiny hook hole and wrap up a knot.  

Mike is learning to row this river.  There is a swift current and a brisk southern breeze sending us speeding downstream.  I whip my line around, expecting and receiving the usual "you are not a very good fly fisherman" comment from The Boatman.  It is true.  I am not good at all.  But I do get lucky and catch a fish every now and then!  

We float down the river, bedazzled by the sun, diamonds on the surface.  When not watching my fly float along, waiting for the gulp of the cutthroat trout fooled by a tuft of hair on a hook, I pause and look up to the hillsides.  The maples are backlit by the afternoon rays, reds and yellows glowing against the shadowed gully.  The river is inky and blue and silver, all at once.    

It is quiet until there are rapids and the sound of water staggering over river rock fills the air.  On calmer water, the noise of the highway we parallel is just audible enough to recall the highway is nearby.  A fish darts up to my fly and I squeal in delight.  I have caught my first fish. 

The fish, of course, is relieved of its annoying piercing hook and set free to swim off to the pool from whence it came.  

The moment of catching a fish is, for me, one of the closest touchings of nature I have felt.  That suddent jolt on the line with the electric wiggling and pulling makes me feel so connected to this natural wild thing.  I should peer at the scenery more often, but I am intent on my floating fly, waiting for that next connection.  I am, shall we say, hooked. 

By the time the river turns and we see the Honda in the parking lot above the bank, I have snagged three fish and an underwater tree limb which takes my fly and I am finished.  Mike sets the raft to the bank and I am left to secure the raft and our belongings while he fetches the Dodge.  

It is quiet.  A couple of fish rise to the surface, gulping tiny insects.  The grasses shiver in the afternoon breeze, curing brown after a week of frosty mornings.  A rose bush on the bank is mostly devoid of it leaves but so packed with vibrant red rose hips, it looks like an early tribute to Christmas trees to come.  

My feet are wet from jumping out and pulling the boat to land.  My face feels sunburnt even though I slathered on 70 sunscreen.  I should have had something to drink along the way but I was too busy fishing.  

Thank you fall.  Thank you for your beauty grasped and held onto today, despite your brevity.  Soon fall will be behind us, like the bridges we float under and winter will trap us inside to sit and remember the day we stopped everything and floated down the river.   

Family Visit

Mike's youngest brother, Steven, and his gal, Jacki, visited last week!  They got nice weather to see Yellowstone, to tour Grand Teton Park and Jackson, to float the Salt River, and then it rained.  All day long.  Which really was not a bad thing.  Mike got his hay in on Monday.  We just took the rainy day off and enjoyed a late breakfast, early drinks, and LOTS of Pitch playing.  We loved spending time with these two!!  Thank you Jackie for sharing your great photos! 

This is my favorite photo of all!! Jackie and Rooster. 

Two Boys on a Boat & Jackie!

Rooster Loves Steve & Jackie 💖

My Pitch Partner - we let the Boys win a time or two!! 

Rainy Day Fun!

And then after they left, a yearling elk decided to walk into the corral with the horses.  It didn't stay long, but that's the first time this has happened!  Sorry our Guests did not get to see this! 

Meanwhile, Mike tries to get the ginormous heater working in the greenhouse.  It's a beast! Today, the saffron crocus have sprouted up through the dirt.....there is hope.  

 

 

The Cowboy Way

What does "the cowboy way" actually mean, anyway?

Having spent years observing, my assessment is the cowboy way is hard, tough, relentlessly committed to get the job done, sometimes impatient, often quiet, humble, strong, resilient, rough on the outside yet soft in the heart.  

The cowboy hates to see living things die, yet knows death well.  The hole on the ranch where the dead are drug is full of bones, scrambled together in a nonsensicle manner.  Along with death comes much birth.  Spring time is busy with new critters dropping on the cold, spring ground or getting hung up in their mother's birth canal and being pulled to life by The Cowboy. 

This last weekend, Mike and I enjoyed watching life-long cowboy Tom Breen be inducted into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame (WYCHF).  He and 22 of his peers stood before men, women and a few children decked out in their best western attire.  Felt cowboy hats topped the gentlemen wearing their western yolked snap down shirts.  Silver and tourquise embraced the necks of women glittering, bedazzled and beautified in makeup and blouses and skirts.  Everyone wore a shiny pair of pointed cowboy boots.  

Each Inductee and the audiance watched a video interview which was displayed for all to enjoy.  Many of the Inductees could not attend, as they have long been gone from the Wyoming landscape.  Their family - sisters, daughters, sons, and widowed wives accepted the honor in their absence.  

Below is the letter Mike wrote (and I shined up a bit) to the WYCHF for consideration of Mike's nomination of Cowboy Tom Breen.  In reading this tribute, you will see the admiration Mike has for his friend, Tom.  I think it is beautiful. 

How wonderful to celebrate achievements while those we recognize are still among the living.  Tom Breen has earned this recognition and it is my observation that he is a bit overwhelmed, speachless, and around the edges - proud.  

Congratulations, Tom Breen!  You should  us all what the Cowboy Way really means!  We are so proud of everything you are and all you do! 

Tom Breen Story- Section 1

Tom Breen grew up on the Triangle X Ranch and lived there until he graduated from the Jackson Hole high school.  His parents, Ike and Phillis Breen, both worked at the ranch.  At that time, Triangle X was primarily a dude ranch having about 150 horses and mules as well as a herd of cattle until around 1970.  Tom went to work, mounted on a horse, at the age of 11, working as a camp jack on pack trips into the wilderness.  He worked with several old-time packers including Bill Daniels and Jack Davis.  Tom learned from the best and learned well.  He was leading pack strings and pack trips while still in high school.  He broke colts and mules - for the ranch as well as his own - learned to be a horseshoer and became a fine leather worker.  He was involved in the high school rodeo as a team and calf roper.  After Tom’s 1969 high school graduation, he attended Wyoming Tech where he learned diesel mechanics and hydraulics.  With this education under his belt, Tom hired on at the Jackson Hole Mountain resort as a mechanic and snow groomer.  He also spent some time driving snow coaches in Yellowstone National Park.  As winter waned into summer, Tom returned to Triangle X to lead pack trips, shoe horses, pack mules, and guide elk hunters into the fall season.  He managed the Turner’s most remote camp in Falcon Creek for numerous years.  With limited resources in the backcountry, Tom oversaw the care of a herd of horses and mules, was accountable for packing needed food and equipment for the wilderness trips, and watched over the welfare of his help and the many guests that enjoyed a safe and successful experience in the mountains.

He married Susie in 1979 and she joined him at Triangle X.  The backcountry life suited Tom’s new bride and she joined him as camp cook for six years.  

In 1985, the couple moved to the Walton Ranch just west of Jackson Hole, to return to tending the cattle herd, where Tom still works.  When Tom arrived, the Walton Ranch had almost 600 head of cattle.  As summer set in, the cattle went out the gate of the ranch in June and walked to the mountains for the summer, down asphalt and gravel roads, through Grand Teton National Park, and up into the Togowotee Mountains.   It took two weeks to get the cattle to their summer range and most of October to get them back to the ranch.

Tom is involved in all aspects of ranching, but doctoring calves is one of his keenest skills.  Over the years, he has trained a steady string of roping horses to help him do this important job.  He is out at dawn and all hours of the day and night during calving season.

 When Tom hired on at the Walton Ranch, feeding was done with a team of horses.  He took this talent to the hill and worked as a teamster for dinner sleigh rides at Teton Village for several winters in his spare time. 

Tom has made hundreds of chaps and chinks over the years, keeping the pair he built when he was a teenager until they were falling apart just a few years ago.  He finally built himself a new set and his ivory handled knife is safely pocketed in a new leather pouch.  

When branding time comes at the Walton Ranch, Tom can be found running the 4W branding iron, smoke from burning calf hair stinging his eyes and sweat dripping off his face.  For most of the last 40 years, he has tended his own herd of cattle at the ranch, sporting Tom’s Buzzard Cross brand. 

Today, Tom celebrates 72 years of a full life doing the things he does best and the things he loves.  He recently bought a new colt to train and ride, he will be doctoring calves this spring, helping hay, fixing the broken equipment and fence; ready to do whatever needs to be done.  Tom still shoes his own horses, continues to work leather to make useful gear for himself and others.  As a friend of this western character, I can personally attest to Tom’s generosity with his time and his knowledge.  As his friend, I have benefited greatly from Tom’s willingness to help me fix something, figure something out, and generally trying to solve the myriad of puzzles that pop up on a ranch.  Tom is always willing to lend a hand. 

Tom embodies many of the character traits viewed as The Cowboy Way.  He is loyal to the brand, hard working, filled with a sense of responsibility for all things broken (mechanical or living), fiercely independent, sometimes stubborn, talented in a vast array of skills, surprisingly patient, unrelentingly persistent, and maintains a brain like an elephant, remembering every trail he has ridden, ever camp he has set up and tore down, every horse he has ridden, and a whole bunch of other things I wish I knew. 

Tom started working on a riding horse at the young age of eleven.  This year, Tom turns 73 in December, celebrating 61-plus years of working atop a horse under a blue Wyoming sky thinking about what next needs to get done and how he will do it.      

H. Two. Ohhhhh.

The dark gray clouds lumbered in from the west, dragging their bottoms over the soggy mountains.  The water dropping from these sluggish clouds was like that coming off a ledge-less waterfall.  The valley, its pool.  Water ran off roof tops, gathered in puddles, and became streams of murky watery ponds.  

Mules kicked up their heals, swooshed their tails, and ran to cover under the barn.  Birds tucked deep into the pine trees for cover, and hawks and buzzards took the toil of the event, water running off their feathers.  

Today, it rained again.  Most of the day.  The fields are full of blooming alfalfa, golden barley fields, and wheat.  The wet air smells of green plants, wet dirt, and a bit of mustieness.  Tractors with hay rakes are parked in fields.  Center pivots sit where they were shut off.  The farmers pace and fret.  By now in most years, everyone is finishing up.  Today, many have not even begun and if they have, their crop lies cut in the field, a heaping row of rotting, wet plant material.  Sad.  

The dogs and I snuck a three mile walk in this morning suffering only a few rain drops.  Rooster came out of the brush covered in hounds tongue seeds, looking like he had a good case of the measles.  Ruby stays on the road.  Balls of mud cut across our path, the evidence of an elk crossing.  Their tracks deep in the mud, tell that story.  Missing a walk yesterday, the hounds were primed to run across the soggy fields, cut through the tall curing grasses, and forget that hounds tounge sticks to dog fur.  That walk did us all a whole lot of good. 

The season has turned.  Days are shorter.  Mornings cool.  Fall is here.  The elk have not yet begun bugling but soon, soon we will be hearing that magical sound of the mountains.  The Canada geese are bunching up, getting fat on the standing barely.  The hummingbird population has dwindled; their peers flying south for a warmer future. 

The turning of seasons always makes me thankful I made it through another season unscathed.  Teetering between summer and fall and now fall looking toward winter, I imagine long winter walks and skis with the dogs over a landscape quieted by frost, allowed to rest a bit before the madness of growing in a very short season begins again.